Stepping off the street for the first time last week and into The Spheres that Amazon is building on its campus north of downtown Seattle answered plenty of questions about size and scope and so on. But we wanted more answers about some of the details surrounding the unique project.
John Schoettler, Amazon’s VP of global real estate and facilities, and Ron Gagliardo, the company’s senior manager for horticultural services, put down their ceremonial shovels for a few minutes to talk with GeekWire on the day that the first plant went in the ground.
The three glass-enclosed domes, which will be home to as many as 400 exotic plant species at any one time when they open early next year, are a far cry from your average office environment. Temperatures in the mid-70s, water features, tree-house meeting rooms and an abundance of natural light will create a link to nature in the heart of an urban campus.
“To me it is a new, innovative, creative workspace,” Schoettler said. “There won’t be desks in here, but there’ll be great spaces for you to come and sit down with your laptop or your cell phone.”
Schoettler said employees could be joined by a workmate or perhaps they’ll conduct an interview with someone who is a candidate for a job at Amazon — a prospect that puts the tech giant at a decided advantage over other companies in town that don’t have portable jungles on campus.
For Gagliardo, the man who heads a team charged with keeping everything in The Spheres alive, his vision of a fully operational facility is all about people stopping to look at things.
“Whether it’s here in a planting bed, or over on the living wall, we want to create a diverse, lush, botanically rich environment that people can appreciate and learn from,” Gagliardo said.
And while The Spheres will have capacity to hold more than 800 people, non-Amazonians who have watched with curiosity as the project takes shape won’t have daily direct access to the inside. But next year the general public can get in by signing up online for one of Amazon’s campus tours, on which The Spheres will be a stop, Schoettler said.
Heading up real estate and facilities for a company that is literally reshaping a city, Schoettler also talked about how Amazon could possibly follow up on the NBBJ-designed Spheres. He said there’s nothing quite like it on the docket right now.
“We do have a lot of other buildings that we’re going to build here in Seattle that are going to be really super cool and great spaces for our employees to work hard and innovate on behalf of our customers,” Schoettler said. “But nothing quite like this — this is one of a kind.”
At the foot of Amazon office towers called Doppler and Day One, the name is also part of the story. Depending on what circles you run in, The Spheres beat out such contenders as Amazon Domes, Amazon Biodomes, The Orbs and a few others.
“I can tell you that naming these buildings was more difficult than naming a product and certainly more difficult than naming a child,” Schoettler said. “The Space Needle is The Space Needle, and so these are The Spheres. And we thought, ‘Why fiddle with it? It is what it is.’ The Spheres stuck.”
Here’s another GeekWire video showing the full ceremonial planting event inside The Spheres on May 4:
